Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/418

Sharp revenues of the Savoy chapel, supported the bounty scheme and its extension to the Irish church, and acted as mediator in the disputes between the two houses of convocation. He was active in advocating the interests of foreign protestants at the time of the negotiations for peace. He gave a hospitable reception to the Armenian bishops, who came over in 1706 to raise money for printing bibles in their language; and to Arsenius, bishop of Thebaïs, who came from Egypt in 1713 (Lit. Anecd. viii. 250). From 1710 onwards he carried on a correspondence with Jablonski, chaplain to Frederick I of Prussia, with the object of solving the disputes there between Lutherans and Calvinists by means of the introduction of the English liturgy. The death of the king of Prussia put an end to the negotiations. The correspondence, collected by Thomas Sharp, son of the archbishop, and translated into French by J. T. Muysson, minister of the French protestant chapel at St. James's, was published in 1757 for presentation to Frederick the Great (see Relation des mesures … pour introduire la Liturgie Anglicane dans le Roiaume de Prusse et dans l'Electorat de Hanovre. Eclaircie par des lettres et autres Pièces originales,’ &c., with preface by Granville Sharp [q. v.] in Append. III. to Life of Archbishop Sharp).

Sharp procured the promotion of Beveridge, Potter, Prideaux, and Bull. Swift credited him and the Duchess of Somerset with helping to prevent his obtaining the see of Hereford, but hints that he regretted his action (vide ‘The Author upon himself’ in Works, ed. Scott, 2nd edit. xii. 315–18; cf. Schutz to Robethon, February 1714, in  Original Papers, ii. 562;, Queens of England, viii. 483; and art. , sixth ). The cause of offence was supposed to be Sharp's dislike of the ‘Tale of a Tub.’ It has been plausibly argued that Swift borrowed the plan of his satire from Sharp's own ‘Refutation of a Popish Argument handed about in Manuscript in 1686’ (see letter by ‘Indagator’ [Charles Clarke] in Gent. Mag. 1814, ii. 20–22).

On 10 May 1713 Sharp had his last interview with Anne, and obtained from her a promise to nominate as his successor at York Sir William Dawes, bishop of Chester. In December he fell ill, and on the 9th made the last entry in his diary, in which he had written weekly from 1691 till 1702 and daily since. He died at Bath on 2 Feb. 1714. He was buried in St. Mary's Chapel, York minster, where an elaborate Latin inscription was placed on his monument by Smalridge, bishop of Bristol. The epitaph is given in Willis's ‘Survey of Cathedrals’ (i. 60–3), and, with translation, in Wilford's ‘Memorials of Eminent Persons’ (Appendix).

Sharp was married, by Tillotson, at Clerkenwell in 1676 to Elizabeth Palmer of Winthorp, Lincolnshire. Of his fourteen children, only four survived him. Of these, John Sharp (1678–1727) of Grafton Park represented Ripon from 1701 to 1714; he was a commissioner of trade from 15 Sept. 1713 to September 1714, and died on 9 March 1726–7; in Wicken church, Northamptonshire, there is a monument to him and his wife Anna Maria, daughter of Charles Hosier of Wicken Park. Thomas (1693–1758), the youngest son and biographer of the archbishop, is separately noticed.

Macky in 1702 described Sharp as ‘a black man, one of the greatest ornaments of the Church of England.’ All authorities agree in praising him as a preacher and divine. His tastes were liberal. ‘He loved poetry all his life,’ writes his son; and Onslow, in a note to Burnet, says that he was wont to say that the Bible and Shakespeare made him archbishop of York (Hist. of his own Time, iii. 100). He is also said to have ‘admitted and admired the new philosophy of Sir Isaac Newton, of which he used frequently to discourse.’ His hobby was the collection of coins. These he left to his friend Ralph Thoresby [q. v.], together with a manuscript treatise, ‘Observations on the Coinage of England.’ This is said to have been of great use to Thoresby and succeeding writers, such as Stephen Martin Leake [q. v.] The manuscript, purchased by Gough in 1764 at the sale of Thoresby's museum, was printed in Nichols's ‘Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica’ (vol. vi.; cf. Lit. Anecdotes, ix. 97). Part of it also appeared in Ives's ‘Select Papers’ (1773).

As a controversialist Sharp was strenuous, but candid and urbane. Several of his sermons appeared in his lifetime. ‘Fifteen Sermons on several Occasions’ reached a seventh edition in 1738. Some sermons were contained in ‘Protestant Writers’ (vol. ix. 1762), ‘Family Lectures’ (vol. ii. 1791), Cochrane's ‘Protestant Manual’ (1839), Brogden's ‘Illustrations of the Liturgy’ (iii. 1842). Felton, in his ‘Dissertations upon reading the Classics,’ held them up as models of style. Evelyn, who heard him preach at the Temple in April 1696, notes that ‘his prayer before the sermon was one of the most excellently composed I ever heard’ (Diary, ii. 341). As compared with Tillotson, Burnet found him wanting in knowledge of the world. Of his general